How Founder and CEO Coach Todd Uterstaedt Finds Mental Clarity and Brings High-Powered Achievers Together

Todd Uterstaedt interacts with high-powered leaders all day, guiding them as they build their teams, create their company culture, and practice the productivity hacks that help them transform from founders to CEOs. But ask the founder/CEO coach and "From Founder to CEO"podcast host just how he stays focused on his priorities as he juggles a family and demanding clients, and his answer may surprise you: pool walking. Yup, you read that right. Uterstaedt's secret to being a high achiever hinges upon whether he can get to his local pool and unplug for an hour while walking laps. "Productivity and mental clarity are intimately connected,"Uterstaedt explained to me. "You have to exercise, right? You have to do things that give your mind peace and clarity so that you know the single biggest thing to do as it relates to productivity, which is appropriately prioritize. "You can't prioritize things if your mind is racing and you haven't given your mind the opportunity to be clear about exactly who you are, exactly what your company's doing and exactly what your responsibilities are within that company." Uterstaedt experienced a major moment of professional clarity during his time in the Army. He was stationed in Berlin just after November 9, 1989 — a.k.a. the date the Berlin Wall fell. "I was enlisted at the time and watching military officers do their work as intelligence officers. I was doing well and heard about a "Green to Gold" scholarship, in which an enlisted individual can apply to go back to school, finish their degree, and become army officer." Not one to back down from a challenge, Uterstaedt decided to go for it, and got it. Now, he credits that year in Berlin and the amazing things that were happening there with him going after his first big professional moment. And the achievements have only piled up since then. Today, Uterstaedt brings people together through his peer group for founding CEOs, Trail Team 10. Recognizing that founders need a group of peers to bounce ideas off of, Uterstaedt launched Trail Team 10 about a year ago to help a group of founders from different cities come together on a regular basis and solve practical problems. And despite being from different cities, Uterstaedt helped this group foster a distant intimacy that felt real and authentic. But whether you're a founder/CEO or a regular 9-5er trying to grow professionally, Uterstaedt has one piece of advice for setting and achieving your goals. First, he suggests setting six month goals instead of annual goals, reasoning that a year is too long for most goals and a June check-in can be much more valuable. Second, Uterstaedt recommends sharing that goal with two key people: one who knows you personally and "just gets you," and one professional acquaintance who "knows the industry" and can offer their perspective there. To hear more of Uterstaedt's tips for founders and CEOs and apply them to your own goals, listen to our episode of #WeGotGoals. Don't forget to rate and review on iTunes. --- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLIfe.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Cindy Kuzma and Kristin Geil.   KG: Good morning, Jeana.   CK: Good morning, Jeana.   JAC: Good, morning, Kristen and Cindy.   KG: So this week I spoke with Todd Uterstaedt, who is the founder and CEO of a company called from Founder to CEO. He's got a podcast of the same name and his goal is to help level up your leadership. So he's a founder and CEO coach and he has a lot of really interesting insights into productivity and the sort of ways that you organize your day and the small changes you can make to make you not only a better more productive manager but a better leader and a better CEO.   CK: There were so many things that I thought were interesting about this interview, Kristen, and one of them was the way that Todd uses both old school techniques and technology to achieve his goals and to help others achieve their goals. I thought his workout of choice was particularly fascinating, pool walking, because this is something that as a runner who has been injured I have forced myself to do when I've been hurt but the idea that if somebody does that as their workout of choice it's fascinating and I think some of the reasons were really interesting. Can you talk to me a little bit about that.   KG: Yes absolutely. So Todd, as you will hear in this podcast, he loves technology. He is all about using technology strategically to help us replace time-sucking administration tasks. One he mentions specifically was the act of scheduling a meeting. You know there's always a lot of back and forth about. No I've got this time at this time.   But what about location and he mentioned a technology that specifically takes that back and forth out of scheduling so all you have to do is sign up for a time slot and you are good to go with your partner that you're trying to meet with. However, when everything's getting to be a little too much and he needs to clear his head his favorite way to do that is to go completely off line for some pool walking. And he said that he loves the Zen aspect of it. He loves the fact that he physically can't have a phone or an iPad or a computer with him obviously because of the water. And he said it's when he gets some of his best thinking done. So I think there's other ways to do it if pool walking has bad memories for you Cindy, I'm sure you know running without technology could be something similar. Any way to unplug throughout the day and really sort of get into a flow state where you can let the ideas come to your mind more naturally instead of having a brain that works on overdrive trying to solve every one of the world's problems in the next 24 hours.   JAC: He talks to a lot of people who have gone from starting their own company to really moving into the role of CEO. And one thing he sort of preaches is the act of accountability. Can you talk a little bit about that?   KG: Yes. So one thing that I thought was really interesting. We've all heard about accountability buddies. You know someone that you text in the morning to make sure that they're going to the gym at the same time as you or someone who is maybe trying to reach a similar goal to you at the same time so you can work on it together. And he encourages his clients to do that as well of course but with a slight twist he wants his clients to share their goals with two people. One person that you know personally and who gets you, who sort of understands the way that you're wired and maybe why you're choosing to accomplish certain goals and maybe how you'll stand in your own way or what particular strengths you have that will help you in that process. But aside from that personal friend he wants you to share your goals with one professional acquaintance who can hold you accountable while knowing maybe more about your industry and you know wha tips and tricks you can use, other people in your network who might be able to help you and sort of having this dual accountability really keeps your goal well-rounded and makes it more of a focus because you're not just segmenting it off until like this is a professional goal or this is a personal goal. It really helps to incorporate it into your whole life.   CK: Yeah I loved that and I think that that is just one of the pieces of practical advice that people are really going to be able to take away from this interview. So here is Kristen with Todd.   KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristin Geil and today I'm here with Todd Uterstaedt, the founder and CEO of From Founder to CEO. Todd, how are you doing today?   TU: I'm doing great Kristen, how are you?   KG: I'm good. Thank you. We're so excited to have you on this podcast because leadership and goal setting is something that we're very passionate about over here on aSweatLife and we've loved hearing from you about how you take people to the next level especially when they're cofounding and founding their small businesses and really going through that process to become leaders. So to kick us off can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you got the idea for From Founder to CEO?   TU: Yeah. So I'm a former Army intelligence officer who kind of transformed myself into a management consultant at one point in time. And we started our own executive coaching firm and along the way we started getting lots of phone calls from startup CEOs who said, hey, Todd can you coach us? And Kristen, our business model was not set up for them. It was usually it was set up for mid-sized companies and for corporations. So I got the crazy idea saying well why don't I do a podcast interview successful founders about kind of their personal leadership transformation into CEO because it's really hard to scale a business and scale yourself at the same time. And so yes we started this podcast called from founder CEO and it just took off.   KG: Who was a recent guest that you had on? Anyone interesting?   TU: Yeah. Do you know Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise?   KG: No. Tell me more.   TU: So Adam wrote this book a New York Times bestselling book called Promise of a Pencil. And it describes his journey from starting Pencils of Promise, which builds schools around the world in underdeveloped areas and they've built over 400 schools now. A...